


A Series of Significant Events

by Azzandra



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, kink meme fill, mostly just a bit sweet, nsfw bits not explicit but implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments over the course of a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Series of Significant Events

**Author's Note:**

> Response to a kink meme prompt:
> 
> _I'd love to see some Cole/f!Trevelyan. I'll give you my firstborn child, dear anon._
> 
> _Bonus if:_
> 
> _\- she's a mage_  
>  \- she's his age (early 20's)  
> \- more human Cole 
> 
> _Could be anything with these two. Cole watching her sleep, or taking a bath together (like that scene in Pretty Woman haha) or Cole showing her some hidden Skyhold spots. They relationship is both emotional and physical._

The door was locked; Evelyn pushed, then pulled, then jiggled the door handle a few times, but by the feel of it, it truly was locked and not jammed.  
  
“I don't suppose anyone here knows how to pick a lock,” she said idly, not really expecting an affirmative answer.   
  
On that particular outing through the Hinterlands, she'd taken along Solas, Iron Bull and Cole. She wasn't sure who she expected to be least likely to know how to open a lock until he spoke up.  
  
“I can do that,” Cole said.  
  
Evelyn couldn't quite keep the surprise off her face, but she did manage to hold back on asking some very bewildered questions on how or why a spirit would have that particular skill set.  
  
“Have at it, then,” she said, moving aside and gesturing towards the door.  
  
Cole hummed and sank to his knees in front of the door, producing a set of lockpicks from—Evelyn assumed—the Fade, because she certainly didn't see him reach into a pocket or anything of the sort.  
  
She watched Cole's spindly fingers with fascination, the way they held the lockpicks not quite right, the way he moved them like he was coaxing. His face was right up to the lock and his lips were moving, a soft murmur escaping them.  
  
She should have let it pass, but couldn't.   
  
“Cole,” she said, “are you  _talking_  to the lock?”  
  
He turned his head towards her, twisting his neck uncomfortably to look at her from under the brim of his hat. His hands continued to work.  
  
“The metal dances,” Cole replied. “Little pieces twisting around each other, twirling, turning. If they do it right, they end up back where they started, even rows, dancers ready for the new song. I ask them to dance the right steps.”  
  
There was a click, loud and definite. The door swung inwards.  
  
Evelyn's eyebrows rose.  
  
“Ah. Thank you, Cole,” she said faintly.  
  
Then she looked towards the others. Solas was perfectly serene in a way that Evelyn suspected meant he was smirking on the inside. Bull, at least, looked just as weirded out as Evelyn felt, so that was something, at least.  
  
“I like to help,” Cole said.  
  


* * *

  
  
By the time Evelyn had trudged all the way through Haven and up to Solas' door, a soft snowfall had started, and fat snowflakes clung to Evelyn's eyelashes, unmelting.   
  
There must have been something especially miserable in the way the cold made her sniffle, because Solas actually invited her inside and set a chair for her by the fire. She sat down and started shivering right away as the heat of it sank into her suffering flesh. She'd gotten somewhat used to enduring the cold of the south since leaving Ostwick, but she was still bred in the humid summer heat of the Free Marches.  
  
It took her a few moments to remember what she'd come to discuss with Solas, but he had something to ask as well.  
  
“Tell me, what do you think of Cole?”  
  
The question took Evelyn by surprise, because if anyone's opinion on Cole was relevant, it would be Solas', not hers. But this was a question like her teachers at the Circle would ask, to test her, to assess her knowledge. Evelyn could slip easily into the student role. She'd been good at giving the answers her tutors wanted, and not merely the ones that were correct.  
  
It perhaps didn't help that she was still young, and felt it all the more keenly for the fact that the people surrounding her weren't. Barely in her twenties, she was closer in age to the rawest recruits, instead of the highest echelons of the burgeoning Inquisition.   
  
She detached herself from Evelyn-the-student and tried to be Evelyn-of-the-Inquisition instead.  
  
“He's very single-minded,” she replied to Solas.  
  
“Spirits often are,” Solas said agreeably. “To act against their nature would twist them to demons. This does not mean they lead a limited existence, however.”  
  
Evelyn had no idea if Solas had been pleased by the answer she gave or not; the conversation turned to other things.

 

* * *

  
  
She felt like she was being tested again. This time it would be while she sat in a high-backed chair, the chill of the mountains rolling in through the open balcony doors.  
  
“You do realize it's dangerous, my dear,” Madame Vivienne would say about Cole, an eyebrow arched as she looked at Evelyn over her tea cup.  
  
Vivienne felt less like a teacher to Evelyn, and instead reminded her of her godmother. They held themselves in the same way, for all that Katerina Trevelyan could only metaphorically freeze people, usually with only a chill look.  
  
“I know,” Evelyn replied. “We all are. You have to be a bit dangerous to make a difference these days, don't you?”  
  
But Vivienne's expression remained flat.  
  
“It is a  _demon_ , my dear,” she said. “You cannot treat it as a person, and you can certainly not expect it to be dangerous in the same way as one.”  
  
“I know that too, Madame Vivienne,” Evelyn said. “But being a spirit—or a demon—is exactly what limits him. He's easy to steer if it's in the direction he wants to go anyway.”  
  
Vivienne did not reveal her surprise, but Evelyn rather felt it in the long pause that followed.  
  
“It appears you've given this some thought,” Vivienne said eventually. She sipped her tea with a thoughtful frown before looking up and smiling at Evelyn. “Very well, dear. Keep your pet, if you insist. Just remember that he's your responsibility.”  
  
Ah, but wasn't  _everything_  these days? Evelyn swallowed the remark before it could escape her mouth and washed it down with tea.  
  


* * *

  
  
Evelyn liked the higher ground, especially when it allowed her to see all the way down to a small Venatori camp while going unnoticed.  
  
“We gonna hit them, Boss?” Bull asked, softly, because voices tended to echo against the rocks.  
  
“Yes,” Evelyn replied, already looking down the cliffs for a path that would drop them as close as possible to the Venatori without being noticed.   
  
She could just feel Bull's anticipation as he hefted his weapon, and the prickle of Solas' magic as he prepared. Cole was quiet, noiseless in his slightly unnatural way, but that meant he was ready for a fight as well. Evelyn took her staff into her hands as well, feeling its magical energies wake up under her palms.  
  
She needn't have bothered, however, because in the next few moments, the small camp was attacked by a very large, very angry bear.   
  
There were a few moments of incredulous silence as all four of them watched the men get ripped into by the bear. Evelyn's hands tensed on her staff; there was no point jumping in to also draw the bear's ire, but after it was dead, they could attack the weakened Venatori before they had the chance to recoup.  
  
She relaxed again in about a minute, when she realized that  _the bear was winning_. It was going to slaughter the Venatori.

She snorted a laugh, and then immediately covered her mouth with a hand. She'd always been teased by her brothers for her unlady-like laugh, but mostly, she felt a bit ghoulish for laughing at people getting mauled by wildlife.  
  
But Bull was chuckling as well, and Solas looked more amused than Evelyn had ever seen him. Cole remained unreadable as always; humor was one of those things that Varric had found especially difficult to explain to him.  
  
“Right, so, let nature take its course?” Evelyn asked, grinning.  
  
“Wonderful thing, nature,” Bull replied, matching her grin.  
  
“Perhaps this is exactly what the Inquisition has been missing,” Solas said in a perfect deadpan. “Bears.”  
  
Evelyn completely lost it at that point, bursting into slightly hysterical laughter. It was all completely absurd; a bunch of self-aggrandizing Tevinter cultists, being foiled by fauna. Bears, of all things.  _Bears_. The Venatori probably could hear her from down there, the laugh of the Herald ringing in their ears as they lay dying from grievous bear-induced wounds, but she could hardly stop.  
  
She hadn't laughed since before her hand was marked, and she hadn't laughed that  _hard_  since before the Ostwick Circle fell. It left her dizzy and leaning on her staff to keep herself upright, and when she was done, she wiped tears from her eyes as she gasped for breath. In some ways, it had felt more cathartic than crying.  
  
“Alright, Boss, let's go down and loot some corpses,” Bull said, patting her on the back.  
  
The bear had run off after finishing its rampage. They climbed down into the valley, sliding over rocks more easily than Evelyn anticipated, and walked into the camp. The fire was still burning merrily, a pot of stew over it, and that was an image that would have looked almost inviting if not the blood and gore splattering the ground around it.  
  
Evelyn wrinkled her nose, but tugged at the blood-soaked fabric of one of the cooling bodies looking for anything of import—loose coin would do as well as written orders.  
  
“Uh, Boss, weren't there three of them?” Bull asked.  
  
Evelyn looked up, then around.  
  
Yes, there  _had_  been three of them. One corpse in front of her, one a little ways off, and the third...?  
  
The Venatori stalker burst out of stealth so close to her that she wouldn't have had any time to react even if she'd been expecting it.   
  
But in a confusing blend of smoke and a sudden snap of the Veil, Cole intercepted him. Evelyn got an elbow to side that sent her sprawling to the ground. She had no idea whose elbow it had been, or really registered what happened until she looked to her left and saw Cole with one of his dagger plunged deep into the underside of the stalker's jaw, wedged between his helmet and his chest guard.   
  
Evelyn scrambled away as the Venatori gurgled his last breath.  
  
Bull and Solas converged on her, and Evelyn felt Bull pull her to her feet.  
  
“I almost died!” she said, sounding more astounded than anything.   
  
Again. She'd almost died  _again_. The only one who could plug the holes in the world, and she'd almost been done in by a man with a couple of fancy tricks. Oh, Maker, she'd almost failed everyone.  
  
If she was overly cautious for the rest of the time they were in the Hinterlands, nobody said anything about it.

 

* * *

  
  
Uncertainty gnawed at Evelyn in the weeks after she made the choice for Cole to grow. She wondered if, perhaps, he could not withstand his own pain as well as he could others', especially since his entire reason for existence was to ease that pain.  
  
But she couldn't go back now. She'd pulled Cole to this side. She'd made him more human. She remembered Solas' disappointment with her decision, but at the time she unkindly thought that it had more to do with the fact that, given the choice, Solas would have preferred to lead the life of a spirit instead. Varric... just wanted what was best for Cole, and in the end, so did she.  
  
And things were not so different, Evelyn didn't think. She walked into the rookery one day to see Leliana smiling faintly to herself, her eyes far away as she held a goblet of wine to her lips, half-forgotten.  
  
“Strange, I did not think this wine was honeyed,” Leliana remarked, and Evelyn wondered what trick Varric had shown Cole to accomplish that.  
  
If before Evelyn had had to infer a great deal about Cole's activities, she became much more closely appraised of them once he lost the ability to make people forget him. He still lurked the battlements, listening, but now Evelyn came across him just about everywhere in the keep. Uncertain, trying to make himself smaller, trying to relearn how to become unnoticed.  
  
“Their eyes stick, now,” Cole said. “They remember.”  
  
He was unsure about everything in ways he hadn't been before. More human, more solid, but more vulnerable.  
  
Once she found him lingering on the steps up to the library, fidgeting nervously.  
  
“How will I know which book to put the flowers in?” he asked Evelyn.  
  
“Who are they for?” Evelyn asked.  
  
“ _Smell of fresh cut grass, the sunlight through the leaves dappling the ground, Derrick's fingers against my temple. 'Blue to bring out your eyes,' he says, and weaves the flowers in my hair._ ” Cole looked down at the flowers in his hands. “She kept them in a book, pressed between the pages, but all the books burned, brittle ashes, bitter losses.” His mouth twisted painfully. “And the flowers aren't right, not really, but they're blue.”  
  
“I meant what was her name,” Evelyn asked.  
  
Cole thought about it for a few brief moments.  
  
“Lorenne,” he said finally.  
  
“Alright then,” Evelyn said.  
  
She walked into the library, had a hushed conversation with Dorian, who practically lived there. He knew the young lady, a stroke of luck considering how standoffish some denizens of Skyhold could be about him. Lorenne was on cold but polite terms with Dorian, and had even accepted some of his reading recommendations. From there, it was all a matter of choosing the right book, and Dorian accepting to slip it to her once the flowers were sufficiently pressed.  
  
A few days later, when Evelyn climbed the steps to the battlements, Cole seemed to be waiting for her.  
  
“She found the flowers,” he said out of nowhere. “She'll keep the book forever.”  
  
“I'll get other copies for the library,” Evelyn said, smiling.  
  
Cole fidgeted, fingers nervously working together.  
  
“I didn't think of asking Dorian about it,” Cole said. “Everything was simpler, before. There was nobody helping by asking for help to help.”  
  
Evelyn felt a thread of regret curling in her chest.  
  
“Does it bother you?”  
  
“No,” Cole said. “I can still help. That's what matters.”

 

* * *

  
  
Evelyn didn't like taverns all that much. Too loud, too hot, too many strange smells. The only times she ever dropped in at the Herald's Rest was to talk to friends.  
  
But she did like one open air tavern in Val Royeaux. She dropped in a few times over the course of her repeated visits to the city. It was pleasant and quiet. People didn't stare, though admittedly, perhaps they did and Evelyn just couldn't tell; the masks made it difficult to say for sure.  
  
Usually she convinced someone to come with her. She'd had lovely conversation with Josephine there, as well as Dorian, Cassandra or Varric. The time she'd taken Bull had been memorable, but not worth repeating. Madame Vivienne, of course, had more exacting standards about where she would allow Val Royeaux to see her dine, and Sera insisted she had no appetite where a bunch of noble pricks could eyeball her.  
  
When Evelyn's most recent business to Val Royeaux was finished, she decided to leave the lavish guest manor where she and her party were lodged and drop in at the tavern.  
  
Cole was tying a pale blue handkerchief to a wrought iron fence when she came across him. She had no idea where he found the thing, but there was probably someone he wanted to find it there, some pleasant memory it was meant to evoke when the correct person passed by.  
  
Already in a buoyant mood, Evelyn felt a pang of tenderness over the gesture. Once Cole was finished, she looped her arm around his and pulled him away.  
  
“How would you like to get out of here?” she asked. “Maybe do something fun?”  
  
He looked at her askance.  
  
“I don't know, I've never tried.”  
  
“Come on,” she wheedled.  
  
He looked down at the arm around his and touched his fingers to her forearm as if she was some curious new thing to him. She released him, not wanting to drag him along if he didn't want to come.  
  
“Alright,” he said quickly. “I hope I'm good at it.”  
  
Laughter bubbled up in her, and she beckoned him along.  
  
They spent the rest of the afternoon at the tavern, and though their conversation felt too serious at times to be qualified as fun, there was something light and warm in the time they spent together that she would remember.  
  


* * *

  
  
It was typical, really, that only after Corypheus was defeated the nightmares started.  
  
Evelyn rarely lost sleep when her days were filled with too much stress and responsibility. She slept tensely, flinched awake in the middle of the night, but she never had nightmares. Only once she felt safe and relieved did her mind ease its mulish grip on keeping her functional, and the dam broke.  
  
She woke up terrified in the darkness of her quarters, not by the darkness itself, but by the fact that she was alone. In her nightmare-addled mind, the room felt immense, like the maw of some great creature waiting to snap shut on her and erase her from existence.  
  
Her hands gripped the covers, so stiffly it was painful, and in the irrational terror she was feeling, she thought that the slightest motion would damn her to the Void. Oh, Maker, how she wanted someone to be here, how she wanted to not be alone. But there was nobody at her back anymore, everyone was gone, everybody forgot about her completely.  
  
She sobbed, her voice tiny and broken in the yawning chasm between the walls of her room.  
  
When the hand pressed against her shoulder, she was so frozen with fear she didn't even flinch.   
  
“You're not alone. I'm here,” Cole's soft voice came.   
  
He pressed his palm firmly against her shoulder so she could feel it, feel him, and terror receded. Rational thought returned, and with anybody else Evelyn would have felt embarrassed over this, but not with Cole, who knew people from their most intimate thoughts outward.  
  
She breathed evenly, and calmed down. Cole kept his hand against her even as she snuggled deeper into the covers, and she fell asleep knowing he was there.

She woke up with pink dawn light against her eyelids and Cole's hand still touching her shoulder. He was sitting on the edge of her bed.  
  
“You've been here all night?” she croaked sleepily, sitting up.  
  
“It would have been worse if I'd left,” he said.   
  
The murky dregs of her nightmare came back. She'd been alone and abandoned, everybody forgetting about her, disappearing between blinks of the eye. It probably  _would_  have been worse, waking up alone again, to have her nightmare played out. Though more of her companions stayed with the Inquisition than she'd anticipated, there were some absences she still felt keenly; Solas had left without a word of goodbye, but even Varric and Cassandra's more considerate departures had taken a toll.  
  
“Cole,” she said, pulling her knees to her chest, “remember when I asked you to promise you wouldn't make me forget knowing you?”  
  
“...Yes.”  
  
“Both times?”  
  
Guilt flitted over Cole's face. He turned away, hid his expression.  
  
It was only recently that she remembered it had happened twice. She thought her memory was playing tricks on her at first, overlapping the conversation she was sure she'd had at Skyhold with the image of talking to him in Haven. But it felt too real, the snow up to her ankles, the exact sweep of snowflakes between them.   
  
And he made her forget extracting that promise from him the first time.  
  
“I didn't understand,” he said, fidgeting. “I'm sorry. I... made you afraid, by making you not remember. That wasn't what it was  _for_.”  
  
“But you knew that was what I was afraid of,” she said.  
  
He remained silent, but he  _knew_. She was too bright for him to plumb the depths of her mind, but some things still rose to the surface. He told her as much, that day in Val Royeaux.  _Gentle. You watch me walk into darkness over and over, and you always worry. Thank you._  
  
He'd thanked her so many times, and so many of those times she hadn't even known what for.  
  
She reached for him, touched his chest and then skimmed her hand up along the column of his neck and cupped the side of his face. She pressed gently, as gently as his hand on her shoulder the night before, and turned his face to look at her.  
  
There was fear in his eyes, and she knew it was because if she asked him to leave, he'd do it.  
  
“Do you miss being able to make people forget?” she asked.  
  
“No,” he said. “I don't need it anymore. And after I hurt you with it...” His voice cracked and he trailed off.  
  
Evelyn felt her throat burn with unshed tears, though she had no idea what part of this was making her want to cry. She didn't feel right granting him forgiveness, when he'd made so many others forget. For all she knew, he'd wronged other people much worse. But it did hurt, it  _had_  hurt, and selfishly, she needed him to know that.  
  
Her hand was still up against the side of Cole's face, and her thumb caressed his cheek slowly. This was as much forgiveness as she could offer, and his face crumpled into awe and sadness, as if receiving a benediction. He turned his face to her hand, nuzzled her palm, apologetic. Then he placed a hand over hers to keep it in place, closed his eyes and drank in her warmth.  
  
“I'm sorry,” he said again, voice muffled by her palm. “I'll do better.”  
  
“I know,” she said, for lack of anything else to say.

 

* * *

  
  
The world not immediately ending meant, for some reason, a great deal more reports to sift through. Before, when she'd been traipsing across the countryside, closing every rift herself, only the most important matters ever came to her attention. Now, it seemed every minor issue necessitated her urgent input.  
  
Evelyn pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, the outline of words stamped on the inside of her eyelids for how long she'd been staring at the papers. She heard the door to her quarters open, but didn't look up. As long as she didn't look up, she wouldn't need to acknowledge that it was probably Josephine with yet more reports.  
  
The footsteps didn't sound right, though, and when something was placed on her desk, it didn't sound like a stack of paper.  
  
She removed her hands from her eyes and was surprised by the sight of a bowl of raspberries in front of her.  
  
“Varric sent them,” Cole explained, as he stood before her desk, “in little jars humming like winter.”  
  
Evelyn grinned. She'd only mentioned once that she missed raspberries from the Free Marches. The ones from Ferelden were not as juicy, and the ones from Orlais tasted like smugness and decadence. She didn't think Varric was going to return to the Inquisition, for all that his letters to her avoided stating it outright. But he sent letters and for now, that was enough. And now he sent raspberries, too.  
  
The first one she ate burst with the flavors of home on her tongue, like the Trevelyan gardens, where she played hide and seek with Maxwell.  
  
She looked up at Cole, who was looking at her intently. Had he sensed that?  
  
“I should take a break,” Evelyn said brightly.   
  
She picked up the bowl and grabbed Cole's hand, and she took them both with her to the sofa. Cole sat down next to her with remarkably little awkwardness, considering that he was more used to skulking the battlements like a gargoyle.  
  
“Do you want some, Cole?” She offered the bowl.  
  
“I-- no,” he said, wrinkling his nose uncertainly at the fruit.  
  
“Still don't eat?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Ah, then you don't know what they taste like, either?”  
  
“I... do know,” he said slowly. “They taste like times or places or the company of other people. Sometimes like tears, or laughter, or peace.” After a pause, he asked, “What do they taste like to you?”  
  
“Are you only asking because you can't see into my mind?” Evelyn asked, as she stopped with a raspberry against her lips.  
  
“No,” Cole said, something like pleading in his voice, “I just want to know. They make you happy, I want to know why.”

“Hm.” Evelyn closed her eyes and tipped the raspberry into her mouth, crushing it with her tongue against the roof of her mouth and chewing slowly. “It tastes like... summer in Ostwick.” She swallowed.“Children laughing in the distance. Blue skies. My brother next to me, pushing his shoulder into mine.” She licked her lips slowly. “Breeze too lukewarm, but raspberries soft against my lips, and cool against my tongue.”   
  
Her eyes fluttered open again. Cole was looking at her with such a strange and intense look of longing that Evelyn looked down, embarrassed.  
  
“If you want a taste before I finish them all, you can ask,” she offered, popping another one into her mouth.  
  
“I could do that,” Cole said. “Taste from you.”  
  
“What?”   
  
Evelyn raised her eyes to Cole again, but he was staring at her lips. Tentatively, he raised a hand and touched fingers to her cheek. Surprised by the gesture, she swallowed the fruit in her mouth almost unchewed.  
  
“Cole,” she breathed, almost afraid she'd spook him if she made a move.   
  
“I want to know,” he said, the same pleading as before in his voice.  
  
He leaned towards her and pressed his lips against hers. It didn't feel strange, to Evelyn's surprise. It felt just like kissing a boy. He was gentle at first, and then eager, moving his mouth without really knowing what he was doing.  
  
Evelyn brought a hand up against the nape of his neck, and  _showed_  him. Soft and sweet like the raspberries, and then deeper so he could taste the flavor. He matched her, slowly and intently. Evelyn couldn't remember anyone kissing her so seriously, like it was a task of the greatest importance.  
  
After they broke apart, she leaned her forehead against his, breathing and readjusting to whatever new world this was.  
  


* * *

  
  
She would remember the first time she witnessed Cole pick a lock as they slid against each other, skin to skin. She'd be reminded of it by the way he murmured against her collar bone, soft monologues to her body as he figured out how everything worked. A finger tracing her jaw line, and then he was kissing her cheek—she was naked, and so was he, and he was  _kissing_  her  _cheek_ , and she was so blessedly overwhelmed she felt a sob bubble up in her chest.  
  
Her hands traced his back, a seemingly endless expanse for such a skinny young man, and she was reminded that he was solid, and human, and there, all three at once when before even one of those wouldn't have been guaranteed.  
  
He talked the entire time, the stream of thoughts that anybody else would have kept inside their heads escaping his mouth, telling her how warm she was, how her hair tickled him, how the sheets were clinging--  
  
And then he pulled back to look her in the eyes, and he said, “I want to taste you.”  
  
He said it no more differently than any other remark he'd make about the grass or the wind; she knew he didn't mean her mouth, but it was not in any way meant to be seductive or arousing on his part. It was a statement of fact. For that very reason, it went right through Evelyn like lightning, left her aching wet.

She knew that she would remember that exact moment for the rest of her life.


End file.
